Frost

The birds were landing in the bird bath but they couldn't get to the water so I had to help them by breaking the ice for them and refilling it.

The red shouldered hawk shows up every time I go outside.

Even the squirrels are growing immune to its calling.

Wheels

Oh! The nuthatches...

Winter day
Cloudy sky
Stillness
Except the birds
Who seek
Food.

Above
The deafening silence
The red shouldered hawk
Calls
From the pecan trees
Of my childhood...

Crows
'Caw'
In the south...
The fly westward
Chasing
The hawk
Of out THEIR woods...

And still the hawk
Calls...

Wren knows this call
Is not the call
Of the hunt.
She returns to her song...

A brown creeper
Scratches its way up the pine
Chickadee and titmouse
Fly to and from...

A ruby crowned kinglet
Hangs upside down
Fetching its meal...

Still the hawk calls

Still the crows chase...

Until
It
Stops...

Until
It leaps
Into
Flight
Air catching under his wings

In one
Powerful
Wing beat...
His body lifts
Easily
To the sky.

In the flash of a mere second
The voice that filled
The silence
Becomes the voice
Of the silence...

The world
Returns
To winter.

I listened to a red shouldered hawk call from the top of an oak.

And then, I went in search of it.

My first thought was why was it calling?

Then I heard another in the south responding each time.

While I was pausing to watch this giant majestic and noisy bird the cardinals were dashing to and from the tree line right beside it.

The hawk was clearly not hunting this morning. It seemed to be watching the hold where the ground hogs come out of the woods to feed in the field...